卦Trigram 2.0
Asian Snowcrash

That’s what I’ve heard many people say since I joined Twitter a month or so ago,and it’s true; all of the thoughts that might otherwise have been stored up as potential blog posts are instead released immediately into the Twitterstream… Sometimes they spark up a conversation, more often they don’t, but never mind. At its worst, Twitter is like being on the fringes of a series of interesting conversations, where I learn a lot just from listening. Twitter isn’t the only culprit, of course - work, and a slow network connection, have rather more to do with low blogging frequency recently. Still, I need to make a bit more effort to actually blog longer posts!

The days have mostly been lovely and sunny, with clear blue skies.

Internet connection:

• David at Silicon Hutong suggests that I am not alone in experiencing a really draggy net connection lately.
• (A different?) David at tech86 reminds us that WiMax Beijing is coming soon…
• Kaiser Kuo at Ogilvy Digital Watch mentions that China’s trans-Pacific internet pipe is being upgraded.
• Another possible explanation for why websites keep timing out on me…

Most popular phones suggested to me in shops in the student area of Wudaokou (I’m looking for a camera phone):

• Nokia N6300 @ RMB 1980
• Samsung Anycall G608 @ RMB 5000
• SamsungAnycall D908i @ RMB 2550
• Nokia N95 @ RMB 5880
• Nokia N73 @ RMB 2680

On Chinese phone companies’ design approach:

• CECT offer a phone that doubles as a heart monitor….
• … and HEDY present us with a waterproof, washable phone (possibly inspired by unfortunate events at public toilets in China, which are often slits above a pit?)

From the link to the CECT ‘heart’ phone above, I note with interest this quote from CECT parent company Qiao Xing Mobile’s Chairman, Wu Zhi Yang:

“We dedicate a large amount of resources to our efforts to develop highly differentiated handsets. The C7000A is a result of these efforts. It represents a breakthrough in the use of mobile handset technology. No longer are handsets only tools for entertainment and communication. We have been able to incorporate a piece of advanced medical technology that could possibly save lives. It is this kind of differentiating handset feature that we continually strive to offer to our customers in China.”

Note that they’re only making a few hundred of this model. VERY exclusive… but without doubt something that could easily find a worldwide market. And I suspect that a washable phone might find a ready market in developing countries… Just another couple of example of phone design innovation in China… I’m going to try to track down more about that washable phone.

I don’t know why, but I haven’t been able to access any of my blogs on this domain since I got to Beijing. Email and ftp were OK, but not http. Now, though - just as I was preparing to try and change hosting company again - I’m able to get in. What changed? I don’t know, but let’s hope it lasts!

Beijing is great, as always; I love it here!

Well, I seem to have spent a lot of time lately on moving all my blogs from wordpress.com, and setting up a self-hosted solution. I hope - really, really, hope - that the bugs are all ironed out now! With luck, I’ll have the energy soon to actually start posting real content.

Of course, I do have to do some real work as well. Lots of stuff going on in the background…

As part of the move to a new server, I’m splitting up some of my topics between new blogs.

At present, content will be divided between:

• The World Egg:  New Worlds, new humanity. This will be taking the topics of virtual worlds and transhumanism. Those of you who have been coming here for cyberpunk topics will probably find this one is for you.
• Trigram 2.0: Continues the name of this blog; will be more about Asian life, the global economy, and the telecoms sector.
• Jianghu: My martial arts blog, taking over from http://jianghu.wordpress.com
• Cymro yn y dwyrain: My Welsh-language blog on Asian life.

Since wordpress.com is not accessible from inside China, I won’t be able to post to it once I move to Beijing at the end of this month. So… my blog at http://trigram.wordpress.com is now at this new home. Thanks for coming along!

I’ve just found Tim O’Reilly’s report from the Beijing Foo Camp, posted a week ago. It chimes with everything I feel about Beijing after my time there, and in particular, this:

There are (reportedly) very large differences between the tech cultures in Shanghai and Beijing. Shanghai is very entrepreneurial, with money as a common language. Beijing is more complex, richer by most opinions, but more difficult. We might have felt more at home in Shanghai, but because of the complex interactions between government, academic institutions (which are centered in Beijing), the artistic revival here, and business, many felt that the future is here in Beijing. Of course, they also said that the rivalry between the two cities is like the rivalry between LA and New York.

I totally agree - and it’s one of the reasons why I keep touting Beijing as one of the most interesting places in the world to be right now - and why I’m going back next year

The whole of Tim’s post is worth reading for his thoughts on Beijing, China, and the tech/arts scene.

A year ago, I bought a Nokia 6708, largely for the stylus input and Chinese dictionary. I was pretty happy with it at first, but I have to say that I gradually became more and more dissatisfied. It blue-screened quite a bit, frequently hung and needed a reboot, and regularlt seemed to just turn itself off. It took ages to boot. The lack of letters on the keyboard gradually became a real nuisance. I found that I hardly ever used the Chinese dictionary. The USB connection to my Windows XP laptop was really fussy, and hardly ever seemed to work, so I couldn’t transfer files. The camera quality was pretty lousy. I began to think about getting a replacement.

Then two weeks ago I accidentally left it in a taxi. I’ve filed lost property reports, but it hasn’t shown up and probably never will. I’ve been using my old Nokia 6108, but it’s really obsolete now - especially as I can’t transfer my contacts from my laptop, and there’s no way I’m going to type them all in manually! I had been planning to hang on a few months until Meizu MiniOne is released, but now I can’t wait that long.

Actually, the timing is a bit serendipitous. I’d also been thinking that I need:

• a music player. The Zling Nax (Chinese clone of an iPod Nano) that I bought as an experiment is actually pretty crap, with terrible battery life and sound.
• mobile internet. The 6708 was actually internet-enabled, but my current phone plan doesn’t include data transfer; I signed up for this plan when I first came to Singapore in 2002! My contract has long since expired, but I’ve never got around to changing anything

I’m even more convinced that I need mobile internet after reading this O’Reilly Radar article by Peter Brantley. The points he makes about the way the Millennials (he just says “younger generation”) work - constantly online, social, self-organising, flat hierarchy - are spot on, and remind me of things I was thinking about quite a bit last year: how is this going to work out in Asia? The cultural changes and power shifts that are being driven by ubiquitous multimedia technology, social tools, and mobile internetmean that it’s not just about management styles any more. Here in Singapore, the government is reaching an uneasy modus vivendi with the internet-enabled voice of its citizens, but I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. During the recent protests in Myanmar, we’ve seen how important mobile phone cameras and internet access were - to the extent that the junta were forced to simply cut off all internet access to the outside world. China, of course, will be watching all of this very carefully indeed. However, I’m straying into what’s going to be a separate blog post!

So: I need a new phone, mobile internet, and an mp3 player. To get internet access, I need to sign a new contract. If I sign a new contract, I get discounts on a number of handsets, one of which is the Nokia N73 “Music Edition” which, to be honest, seems to cover all bases, except that it doesn’t have wifi… Seems to be a good choice, though, at S$368, which is what M1 are offering…